Lite-On LVW-5045 Review - Standalone HDD+DVD Recorder

Test Machine:

As this is a standalone DVD Recorder which is not dependent on a PC to operate, the only things important in this case are the drive's video sources and what was used to test and capture the images as well as test the discs recorded using the Recorder.

Video Sources:

• Terrestrial analogue TV
• Sony DVD player DVP-S336

Displays:

• Hauppauge WinTV 878 PVR (to capture screenshots)

PC Drive with PI/PIF testing capabilities:

• Lite-On SHOW 1693S

DVD and CD Players to check compatibility:

Features and techniques:

These are the features of this drive, found at the Lite-On webpage:

HDD Video Recording

Forget about the running out of recording space. With the built in 160GB HDD (Hard Disk Drive), you may record up to 198 hours (SLP modes) of quality video programs on it.

HDD to Disc Backup

The coexistence of the optical disc drive and the built-in HDD on LVW-5045 doesn't stay for nothing! With it, you can record the camcorder footages onto the built-in HDD all at once. In there, you can utilize all the editing functions to the titles and then save them onto discs respectively to share them with family or friends.

Disc to HDD Copy

The contents on any types of disc by copying them to the built-in HDD, where all the editing functions can be utilized. This not only solves the problem that certain editing functions are only applicable to certain disc types but also is convenient given the huge storage space of the HDD.

Note:  Can not copy content protected disc.

Time Shift

Advance feature such as "Time Shift", is also featured on LVW-5045. The "Time Shift" feature allows you to virtually "Freeze" the live TV program while you are temporary interrupted and "Un-Freeze" it to continue viewing the live program.

Record & Playback

With LVW-5045, you can watch the recording program from the very beginning while it is still being recorded, regardless of how far along that recording is in progress. Simply press a key and you no longer need to wait until the recording is completed. Recording will not be interrupted and viewing can be performed any time you desire!

AllWrite Technology

Introducing the world 1st "AllWrite" DVD Recorder from LITEON IT. With the innovative "AllWrite" technology, a DVD Recorder with capability to record on DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW or CD-R/RW discs become reality.

DV Link

Another key differentiator is the DV-Link (IEEE1394) port, which allows you to connect LVW-5045 to a DV Camcorder. By connecting the Camcorder directly to the LVW-5045, users can preserve high-quality digital images on a permanent basis. So you won't miss any of those treasured moments in you digital life. An added benefit is that you may even manage your DV connection by using the remote control.

MP3 & WMA Playback

The LVW-5045 can also playback the ever popular MP3 and WMA music files.

Easy Guider 2

The innovative user friendly interface -"Easy Guider 2", has simplified the DVD recording procedure. You can now instantly access all the major functions available on the recorder without going through the complex procedure. DVD recording has never been so easy !

While most recent VCRs automatically present a set up wizard when powered up for the first time, the Lite-On Recorder does not present anything different or special for its initial power up.  This does have the advantage in that one can immediately start playing DVDs as with any other DVD player, however as with any other VCR, terrestrial TV channels must be tuned in before recording from them is possible and the time & date must be set before scheduled recordings can be performed.

Whenever the Recorder is powered up from standby, it welcomes the user with the following screen:

After the above welcome screen appears, the Recorder will show white noise since at this time there are no terrestrial channels tuned in.  Setting up the Recorder for the first time is fairly straight forward.  Simply press setup and the following screen appears:

When the setup button is pressed, the initial highlighted option is the top thumbnail in the left column.  A thumbnail can be selected by using the up & down arrows.  As each thumbnail is selected, the appropriate options appear in the middle column.  To select something in the middle section (such as shown in the above image), simply press right to navigate in.  Most of the options in the middle section also have sub-options.  Pressing left navigates back out again.  We find this handier than most VCRs where each sub-menu is shown on a new screen.

The first adjustments we would recommend are to set the correct video output, date, time, aspect ratio and audio output.  In the above case, a SCART to SVHS adaptor was used, so without selecting a correct option, a black and white image would be presented.  Be careful not to select 'Progressive' as most TV's do no support a progressive image and this may result in a blank screen if chosen.  If the analogue stereo outputs are connected up to a stereo TV or speakers, no Audio adjustments are necessary.  The Aspect ratio comes in a choice of 16:9, 4:3 Pan and 4:3 Letter Box. 

As there are quite a lot of screens within the setup menu, a rundown of the setup menus can be viewed in the following video clip. 

Time shifting is a feature that is common with most hard drive based video recorders, which basically allows one to control live TV as if it was a recording.  The differences are that one cannot rewind before the point where they activated time shifting or fast forward beyond what is currently broadcasting and that content stored while time shifting is lost once the user deactivates the time shifting feature or changes channel.

To use time shifting, the user must watch the channel through the Lite-On Recorder.  Then press 'Time Shift' on the remote to activate time shifting.  Once Time shifting has been activated, the picture remains in a paused state until the user presses 'Play' again.  The Time Shifting feature requires at least 10 seconds of recording before the picture can be unpaused; otherwise a 'Not Allowed' symbol will appear. 

While Time Shifting is taking place, the total length of the time shift recording is shown on-screen (to the right) along with current position (to the left).  This  info can be toggled on or off by pressing 'Display':

While the time shifting feature is active, the user can fast forward as far as 10 seconds before what is live, rewind to as far as the time when they activated time shifting or pause the picture.  For example, if the telephone rings during a programme, the user can pause the picture for the duration of the call and then later on use fast forward to skip commercials or at least skip scenes until 10 seconds before what is live.

Time shifting does have a few drawbacks in that it is not possible to start a recording while time shifting is active and it is not possible to do any other operation such as change channels, watch another recording or a DVD (with this Recorder) or set up timers unless the time shifting feature is first turned off.  The Time shifting feature can be turned off by pressing the 'Time Shift' button again.  This purges all the stored content during the time shifting.  Unfortunately, it is no possible to save any content buffered-up during time shifting.

VHS Video Recorders have a few drawbacks in that it is incredibly simple to accidentally overwrite a recording by inserting a wrong tape (without write protection) or run into the issue where there is a programme ready to start and there is no blank tape handy.  Well, with a HDD based Video Recorder, those days are gone as whenever the user starts a recording, the Recorder automatically starts recording using the free space available on the HDD.  Should the HDD get full, the Recorder will not overwrite anything by simply refusing to record until the user removes some existing recordings.

To prepare to begin a recording, ensure the Recorder is set to 'HDD' mode.  The recording quality will depend on which recording mode the user has this set to (see 'Setting the recording options" in page 3).  There are several methods to start a recording, such as through the 'Easy Guider', setting up a scheduled recording to simply pressing the 'Record' button.  Recording using the 'Easy Guider' and through a timer will be discussed in the later sections.

Unfortunately, unlike some other HDD based Video Recorders, it is not possible watch another recording, play a DVD (in this Recorder) or adjust any other settings while a recording is taking place.

Direct
Recording

To do a direct recording,
simply ensure the correct channel is showing and press 'Record'.  During
the recording, it shows how much is recorded along with an estimate of how
recording time remains on the HDD:

While recording, a chapter mark can be inserted at the present spot by pressing 'Edit'.  The duration that the recording goes on for can be set by press the 'Record' button a 2^nd time to set the recording duration to 30 minutes and then repetitively to increase the recording duration in steps of 30 minutes (up to 6 hours).

Unlike most other DVD recorders, this Recorder has a very nice feature in that it can record video to recordable CDs also.  This can be useful such as for recording an episode of a show, transferring content from an 8mm camcorder or otherwise making a short recording where having DVD quality is not important.  For transferring 30 minute Hi-8 camcorder recording, the Super Video CD feature would be ideal in this case, especially if the user wants to use a separate disc for each tape and prefers a higher quality recording than with Video CD.

Preparing a CD for
recording

Recording video to a
blank CD-R or CD-RW is fairly similar to recording to HDD.  The Recorder
will only record content to a disc that is either blank or has not been
finalised.  To begin, insert a suitable disc to use.  If a blank disc
is inserted, the following screen will appear:

When recording to CD, there is a choice of two quality modes.  These are Video CD and Super Video CD.  Once the desired mode is selected, this cannot be changed later on.

Recording to CD

Like recording to HDD,
recording to Video CD can be performed either by a schedule, through the Easy
Guider or by simply ensuring the Recorder is in 'DVD' mode on the correct
channel and then simply pressing 'Record'.  While recording, the recording
process and estimated available recording time information can be toggled on or
off by pressing 'Display':

Unlike recording to HDD or DVD, it is not possible to insert a chapter mark while recording.  However, a new track is created for each new recording. 

Finalising a
CD

While recorded content on
Video CD can be played back in the Lite-On Recorder, it cannot be played back
anywhere else without first finalising the disc.  For example, if we try
popping this disc into our standalone DVD player, we get the following
result:

The 'C:13:00" error basically means that the player is unable to read the disc. 

Finalising the disc closes off the session as well as writes the lead-in and lead-out to allow the disc to be played back in a Video CD or DVD player (that supports Video CD-R/RW's).  To perform the finalising process, press the 'Tools' button:

Select 'Finalize (Make Compatible)' and press 'Enter':

Ensure 'Go !' is highlighted and press 'Enter'.  The finalising process takes a moment to complete and the progress is shown.  In our case, it took just over a minute to finalise a 4x CD-RW disc.  Once complete, the following screen shows:

Once the disc has been finalised, it will play in pretty much any player that supports Video CD on CD-R and CD-RW.  The following screen appears once the disc is placed in a suitable player.  In this case, our Sony standalone player:

Erasing a
CD-RW

Unfortunately, unlike a
video cassette, it is not possible to delete an individual recording, overwrite
existing content or edit content on a CD-RW.  Also, once a CD-RW has been
finalised, it is not possible to even add content to the CD-RW.  The only
way to reuse a CD-RW is to erase it. 

To erase a CD-RW, first press the 'Tools' button:

Ensure 'Erase' is highlighted and press 'Enter':

Ensure 'DVD' is selected.  It would not be very wise to accidentally erase its HDD!  Then press 'Enter':

Finally ensure 'Go !' is highlighted and press 'Enter'.  The erasing process takes up to a minute to complete depending on the speed of the rewritable disc.  For a 4X media we have at hand, it takes roughly 1 minute to erase the disc.  There is no option to perform a full erase, but then again unless one is planning on erasing a confidential recording to prevent it being recovered by any means, the lack of this feature will not be an issue for most users.  Once complete, the following screen will appear:

This is the first standalone Recorder that we have come across that can record an Audio CD without requiring special 'Audio' CD-R or CD-RW media.  The advantage here is that the user can use the cheaper standard CD-R or CD-RW media with this Recorder. 

There are a few cases in which using the Recorder has an advantage over using a PC.  For example, if the user's PC has a basic on-board soundcard, the Recorder would likely give much superior recording quality than recording on the PC.  There is no risk in an application hogging the resources such as with a PC.  Finally, the Recorder is more portable than an average PC, so it can easily be set up near a record player or other Hi-Fi equipment to record from.  Even without a TV handy, the display and font controls on the Recorder are enough to work front to making recordings to CD as shown below in this section.

Preparing a CD for
recording

Recording an Audio CD
works in pretty much
the same way as recording a Video CD with the exception no video is recorded to
the disc.  To prepare a blank CD-R or CD-RW for recording, simply load it
in the Recorder and the following screen will appear:

Ensure 'Audio Recording' is highlighted and press 'Enter'.  The disc is ready for recording within a few seconds, even in the case for a 4x CD-RW.  If a TV is not handy, such as if the Recorder is setup near some audio playback or Hi-Fi equipment as the source, simply wait until 'CD' and ''“RW' shows on the Recorder's display and press 'Enter'.  'CDDA' will show on the display once the disc is ready to use.  Audio can be recorded from any of the Recorder's input sources, but for this example, we'll use the Front AV.  Repetitively press the 'Source' button until 'Front AV' appears or in the case without a TV, until 'A-1 in' appears on the Recorder's display as shown below:

As with recording to Video CD, DVD or even HDD, it is possible to schedule a timer to record to an Audio CD, use the Easy Guider or simply by pressing record.  In this case, we have hooked up the front AV's L + R phono ports up to the line-out of our CD player for this example. 

Recording to
CD

To begin a direct
recording, simply
press the 'Record' button.  Recording takes place the moment the 'Record'
button is pressed, so press record as soon as the playback starts on the
Cassette, Record, MiniDisc or other connected player.  The recording
process is shown both on screen and on the Recorder's display as shown
below:

To start a new track, simply press the 'EDIT' button and the Recorder will start a new track with a 2 second pause.  The Recorder also starts a new track for each new recording. 

Unfortunately, like with recording Video CD, there is no way to edit, delete or overwrite existing content on an Audio CD.  If a mistake is made during a recording, the user has no choice but to get a new CD-R or erase the disc in the case with CD-RW and start over. 

Finalising the Audio
CD

In order to play the disc
in CD player, the disc must be finalised first.  For, example, if we try to
play a non-finalised disc in our portable CD player, it shows 'Disc
Error'.  Note that once the finalisation process has taken place, it is not
possible to add more content to the disc.

To finalise the disc, the same steps are followed as with finalising a Video CD.  However, to do this without a TV connected, press buttons in the following order:  Tools, Down-arrow, Enter and Enter.  The finalisation progress is shown both on screen and on the Recorder's display (percentage shown in red):

Once the finalisation is complete, the Recorder's display returns to what it previously showed and 'Completed' will be shown on screen.  Simply press 'Enter' to exit out of this. 

Just to show that the Recorder can record a regular audio CD player, we popped it in our portable CD player with the following result:

Finally, another test in our standalone Sony DVD player:

From what we can see, Lite-On has made recording to DVD as fool proof as possible.  It is as simple as popping in a blank DVD, selecting the channel, set to DVD mode and press record.

Recording to DVD works in pretty much the same way as recording to its internal HDD, with the exception that certain editing features are limited on DVD-R/RW and DVD+R.  DVD+RW (and DVD-RW prepared using full preparation) supports pretty much all the video editing options that are available with content on HDD apart from joining video recordings.  A recording on a DVD can only be merged with the previous or next recording of matching quality, where as a recording on HDD can be merged any other recording of matching quality.

Preparing to record on DVD

One nice feature with
this Lite-On Recorder is that it automatically initialises a blank disc upon
loading it, apart from DVD-RW.  However, the user will need to set the
recording quality based on whether they want a high quality recording or to fit
more content on a DVD, just like selecting between the different play modes on
VHS.

When a blank DVD-RW disc is loaded, the following screen will appear:

DVD+RW has the advantage that the disc can be played back in any DVD player without having to finalise it.  Up until recently, the same also applied with DVD-RW, however in order to allow DVD-RW to be played in another player with finalisation, it needs a full preparation, unlike DVD+RW.  The DVD-RW full preparation process takes about 15 minutes for 4x media or about 30 minutes for 2x media. Preparation with other DVD media and quick preparation with DVD-RW media generally takes between a few seconds to less than a minute.

The recording settings are available by going into Setup and navigating down to the 'Record' thumbnail, as with for recording to HDD:

Like with recording to HDD, the recording quality and maximum recording time will depend on which recording mode the user has this set to (see 'Setting the recording options" in page 3).  To summarise, the modes HQ, SP, LP, EP and SLP offer recording times of up to 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 hours respectively. 

The Chapter Mark interval inserts a chapter mark every set amount of minutes of recording.  Like with playing back content from HDD, chapter marks allow the user to quickly skip ahead or back without being restricted to the maximum fast forward or rewind speed of 16x.

Recording to
DVD

Recording to DVD works
similar to recording to VHS and can be performed either by a schedule, through
the easy guider or by simply pressing record with the correct channel on and
Recorder set to 'DVD' mode.  While recording, the remaining time is shown
on screen and this can be toggled on or off by pressing 'Display':

While recording, it is possible to insert a chapter by pressing 'EDIT' and like with a VCR it is also possible to pause the recording. 

Finalising a
DVD

Unfortunately, unlike a
VCR, it is not possible to playback recorded content on a DVD+R, DVD-R or DVD-RW
(initialised with 'Quick Preparation') on another DVD player without first
finalising the disc.  The finalisation process is identical to the
procedure for Video CDs (see the above section for finalising a Video CD). 
Just be warned that DVD-RW's prepared with quick initialisation can take up to
15 minutes or 30 minutes to finalise with 4x or 2x media respectively,
especially if the disc has very little recorded content.

DVD-RW initialised with a full preparation and DVD+RW are an exception, which cannot be finalised.  Like a VHS tape, it is possible to play these in any other player immediately after recording as well as pop them back in the Recorder to make further recordings or changes on them.  However, it does have a drawback in that it takes up to half a minute to stop a recording since it must update the disc's table of contents.  With other media, once the disc has been finalised, the content on the disc is locked.

The following snapshot shows the DVD+RW's menu after making several recordings to it, played back in our Sony standalone DVD player:

Video CD Recording
Quality

In our opinion, the
recording quality using the standard Video CD mode is pretty much on par with
the average VCR, however with the advantage of not having colour washing, lines,
shaky picture and all the other issues associated with an aging video tape or
dirty VCR heads.  Further quality tests will be performed later on in the
review.

The following image shows what the above scene looks like recorded on Video CD:

Like a regular DVD player, it is possible to pop in an Audio or Video CD or DVD and start playing it.  However, for playing data discs (such as those containing MP3's) and playback back content off its internal HDD, the Recorder has a built in browser to access content on these discs.  The browser will only show suitable content, which includes MPEG 1 & 2 video for the video tab, WAV, WMA & MP3 music for the music tab and JPG & BMP pictures for the picture tab.

The browser can be brought up by pressing the 'Browser' key on the remote.  By default, the browser will show the content based from the source that the Recorder is currently set to.  However, to switch between HDD and DVD, the very right tab gives this choice.  A shortcut is to simply press the 'HDD/DVD' button on the remote.

Video
Browser

When the browser is
brought up, the first view it shows is the Video tab as shown in the following
screenshot:

For each recording, the title, time & date of recording, duration and recording quality are shown below each thumbnail.  Navigating between pages is fairly straight forward by highlighting a page number at the bottom (001, 002, etc.) and pressing 'Enter' to select it or selecting the navigation arrows on the bottom left & right.  Playing a recording is as simple as highlighting it and pressing play or 'Enter'.

Any screen showing thumbnails can also be shown as a Text View such as in the following screen.  However, while only six titles per screen are still only shown for the text view mode, it does have the advantage of showing the full title of each video, especially if the user is interested in looking for a title by name instead of by thumbnail:

Unfortunately, the video browser is not of much use when it comes to (Super) Video CDs or most DVDs that were not recorded by this Recorder.  With these discs, the browser only gives one option and that is to play the disc:

The text view does not give any more options or information.  If the text view mode is shown, it will only show 'DVD Video' also, but without the thumbnail.

Music
Browser

For the Music and Picture
tabs, the browser shows the contents in a folder layout.  Whether browsing
a disc or its HDD, the root level contains folders as shown in the following
screen shot (for the Music tab).  Each folder contains one or more
tracks.  For data discs containing folders within folders, the browser
shows as if all the folders were present on the root level.  Music or
pictures stored on the top level of a disc are shown in the folder
'Default'.

Like with the Video tab, it is also possible to show the contents as a text view.  Using the text view is more useful in this tab as the Recorder only gives a choice of five icons when creating a folder.  The following screen shows the Music folders in text view:

Once a folder is highlighted, the contents can be played by pressing 'Play' or can be browsed by pressing 'Enter'.  For example, the following screen shows the contents of the 'Default' folder:

Note that when browsing inside a music folder, there is no thumbnail mode. 

If a music CD is loaded and the Recorder's mode is set to 'DVD', the Music tab will show one folder with the number of tracks and CD duration shown below the folder:

The Text View basically shows the same info on a single line without the icon, although it is not clear what the purpose of this is for in this case.  When the Audio CD folder is opened, the following screen appears which basically shows the track numbers and their duration:

Picture
Browser

Like the Music tab, the
Picture tab shows the entire disc's or HDD's folders grouped together, with only
pictures shown within each folder.  While this may be handy by not having
to navigate more than one folder deep, it can pose a problem, especially if two
or more folders have the same name and also folders are not put in alphabetical
order.  For example, there could be a folder called 'People' within a
higher folder called 'Paris' and another folder also called 'People' within a
higher folder called 'Chicago', however when the Recorder shows the folders
grouped together, it will show two 'People' folders, however it is not clear
which is associated with Paris or Chicago without checking the
contents.

The following screenshot shows the picture tab at the folder level:

Unlike the Music tab, the user can set any image as the folder image.  By default, it will set the first image within the folder as the folder thumbnail image.  Like the Music tab, folders can be shown as a text layout also to see the full folder titles:

A folder (album) can be shown as a slide show by simply selecting the folder and pressing play.  The time per slide can be adjusted via the main Setup menu, within the section 'Playback' and option 'Slide Time'.

Individual photos can be browsed by navigating to the folder to view and pressing 'Enter'.  This brings up thumbnails of the images with a file name, date and size shown below each thumbnail.  Unlike the Video tab or folder selection levels, it is not possible to show images as a text-only view.

A picture can be shown by highlighting it and pressing 'Enter' or play.  The Recorder will start from this picture and then show the remainder as a slide show.  To keep the shown picture continuously, press the pause button.

While playback content, whether music, video or pictures, the Recorder has some useful features to control playback or show extra information.  For example, the Recorder can easily jump to a given section within a track in which it would take a while even with 16x fast-forwarding.  As each type of content has its own type of navigation, this section broken down into three sub-sections to cover Video, Music and Pictures.  Most of the playback features are available from the navigation menu by pressing the 'Navi.' button. 

Video
Control

While playing video
content, the number of playback features within the navigation menu depends on
whether the video is being played from DVD or a video file.  Some playback
features may be hidden if they are not available, for example the 'Subtitle'
menu is hidden if no subtitles are present.

The following screen shows an example of the Navigation Menu while a music video DVD is playing:

The Navigation Menu consists of the following:

• Repeat
• Zoom
• Slow Motion
  • é  1/2X
  • é  1/4X
  • éŸ 1/2X
  • éŸ 1/4X
• Search
  • Title/Chapter
  • Time (Hidden for Video DVDs)
• A-B Repeat
  • Set Point A
  • Set Point B
  • Cancel
• Subtitle (If present)
  • Off
  • Choice of 1 to number of subtitles available.
• Audio (If more than one sound track)
  • Varies depending on disc, e.g. LCPM, DTS and DD
• Angle (If present)
  • Varies depending on disc
• Information
  • Choice of On or Off
• Exit

The majority of the navigation features such as Repeat, Slow Motion, A-B Repeat, Subtitle, Audio track selection and Angle selection functions the same as with most other DVD players. 

The zoom feature is useful to zoom in on a particular section of the picture and can zoom in levels of 1X, 2X, 3X and 4X.  While there are navigation controls to navigate through the image while zoomed in, it will only move in three fixed points vertical (top, middle and bottom) as well as three points horizontal (left, middle and right).  The following image shows the zoom control panel:

One feature that some DVD players lack is the ability to jump directly to a specific title and chapter.  This is available on this Recorder within the 'Search' option on the Navigation menu.  Unfortunately, the time option is only available when playing video from its internal HDD or from a data disc.  The time navigation makes it simple to jump to a specific point within a recording without being restricted to the fast-forward's 16X maximum speed.

The 'Information' option gives a few details about the current recording being played such as shown in the following screenshot:

Unfortunately, there is no information about the audio or video bit rate as some DVD players will show this information also.

Audio
Control

As there is no picture
shown while playing music, the navigation menu is a much cut-down version of
that shown while playing Video content.  The following screenshot shows an
example of the navigation menu while playing a regular audio CD:

The Navigation Menu consists of the following:

• Repeat
  • Switches between 'Repeat One', 'Repeat All', 'Shuffle Mode' and play.
• Search
  • Track
  • Time
• A-B Repeat
  • Set Point A
  • Set Point B
  • Cancel
• Information
  • On
  • Off
• Exit

The Repeat and A-B Repeat options are like that of most other CD players.  The search option allows the user to directly hop to a given track or time period within the track. 

The information option shows a few more details besides the current track & time.  For Audio CDs, the following information is shown:

For MP3's, the information also includes the name of the track and location as shown in the following screenshot:

Picture
Control

The image navigation menu
is a very cut down navigation menu also since there are very few navigation
features with images to start with.  The following screenshot shows an
example of the navigation menu available while showing pictures:

The Navigation Menu consists of the following:

• Repeat
  • Switches between 'Repeat All', 'Shuffle Mode' and play.
• File Search
• Picture Control
• Information
  • On
  • Off
• Exit

As the photos are shown as a slide show, the repeat feature can be useful to have the pictures repeating in a loop or shuffled.  The file search option allows the user to jump directly to a given file number, however as it is not clear which picture represents which file number, this option is really not that useful besides to skip down a bunch of pictures in a folder containing a lot of photos. 

The picture control option allows the user to zoom into the picture as well as navigate about the picture while zoomed in.  One drawback we find with navigation is that as the Recorder takes about 5 seconds to update the screen each time the picture is navigated up, down, left or right, it can be very tedious to navigate about a large image.  For example, when we zoom into the above 6 megapixel image to the pixel level, it takes about 30 seconds to navigate from the far left to the far right of the image.  Each navigation button moves the picture on screen by roughly half a screen over.  The following screenshot shows an example of the picture navigation control with the above image zoomed in to the pixel level:

The information option just shows a few details such as the folder name the picture is located within along with the filename and file number as shown in the following screenshot:

In an aim to make the DVD Recorder as fool proof as possible, Lite-On has included a step by step Wizard to allow pretty much anyone to perform tasks such as recording, creating a recoding schedule, copying stuff from disc to HDD and vice versa.   

When the 'Guider' button is pressed on the remote, the following screen is presented:

The four common tasks are presented.  Most of the tasks within the Easy Guider can be performed directly from the remote such as playing back a DVD, however for a new user, the guider seems to provide almost a fool proof method to performing most tasks.

Playing using the Easy Guider

At first, it may seem odd to have a Playback guide, however it can be useful for playing back discs with mixed content.  The following screen shows the screen that appears after selecting 'Playback' from the first menu:

If there is a standard Audio CD, Video CD or Movie DVD present in the drive, the player will automatically start playing the disc as if the user simply pressed play without using the Easy Guider.  However, for data discs containing MP3/WMA/WAV music files, MPG video clips or BMP/JPG photos, the drive will bring up the following menu:

When the 'HDD' option is chosen, there is also an option to play the last recorded track by selecting 'Last Record':

Each option displays a different type of content.  The first one displays what MPG files are present, the 2^nd option shows MP3, WAV and WMA files, the 3^rd option shows JPEG and BMP images and the 4^th option allows the user to play music while showing photos.  On the HDD option, the 4^th option shows the last recorded content. 

The following screen shows the screen we get when we go into the Video option:

The '001' and '002' on the bottom of the above screen allows the user to navigate between the two pages.  The following screen shows what the 'Text View' looks like:

The following screen shows the 'Music' option:

Next, the following screen shows the 'Pictures' option:

Finally, the last option allows the user to listen to music whilst showing photos.  When the 'Pictures with Music' option is selected, the Recorder first asks to select a picture:

Once we select the picture, it asks for a track to play (as shown in the 'Music' option).  Finally the photo is displayed along with the track playing in the background.  While the photo is shown, the tracks can be changed using the 'Next Track' and 'Previous Track' buttons, much like the music only option.  The track info can be toggled on / off:

Recording using the Easy Guider

Probably the simplest method to start a recording worry without about forgetting to set certain options is through the Easy Guider.  On the first screen, select 'Record' and press 'Enter'':

Then select the desired source to record from.  If the TV option is chosen, the following screen will appear:

If the TV option was not chosen from the previous screen, the screen shot below will show, otherwise it will show after the channel is chosen.  Unfortunately it does not show the names of the channels, however this is not an issue unless one is not familiar with what channels are on which numbers.

We are quite surprised that they don't give any indication on the above screen that the DVD option is not just limited to DVD.  Even a line of text showing 'Note that the DVD option will also guide you through Video and Audio CDs"

If the DVD option is chosen, the following screen will show:

While most users know what a Video CD and Super Video CD is, unfortunately they don't give any hint about these options above, unlike the info that is given when a blank CD-R is loaded without going into the Easy Guider.

If the 'DVD VR' or 'HDD' option is chosen on an earlier screen, the Easy Guider will also ask to choose a recording quality:

The above screen gives a choice of recording modes ranging from high quality to super long play.  For a recording to HDD that will only be watched once, either HQ or SP will work fine.  However if the recording is to DVD or may need to be transferred to DVD at a later stage, the hours shown to the right indicate how many hours with this recording mode will fit onto a blank DVD. 

If TV was chosen as the source of the recording, the following screen will appear next:

The above screen gives a selection of audio recording choices,  Unfortunately, like the screen with the media choices, some users will not know what the 'Main' or 'SAP' choices stand for, especially if they have never encountered multilingual channels before.  The audio choices are as follows:

Finally, the following screen will appear if the destination is HDD or to disc with the correct disc type loaded:

If no disc is loaded, the following screen will appear:

Finally, if an unsuitable disc is already present in the drive, the following screen will appear asking the user to change the disc.  A few examples include having a finalised disc or wrong disc type such as trying to record using super video CD, but a disc prepared with standard video CD is loaded.

Setting up a timer using the Easy Guider

The one common complaint we hear about the VCR is the difficulty in setting up a timer for a recording.  What happens is that the user sees this 'Timer' button and presses it only to be put off by the large number of entry fields that appear on screen.  So, what Lite-On has done in this case is presented the user with step by step screens using the Easy Guider.  When the user goes into the 'Timer' section into the Easy Guider, the following screen appears:

The above screen basically gives the user the choice of setting up a timer manually or by entering a Video Plus+ code such as the string of digits shown next to each programme in many TV guides. 

First we will start off with manually setting up a scheduled recording, such as in the case where a Video Plus+ code is not available:

Select the input source as with the 'Record' guider.  If the 'TV' choice is chosen, the following screen will appear.  For the 'Front AV' and 'SCART' options, there is no option to select a channel, i.e. the following screen should just show the 'PDC' choice.  Finally, if 'DV' is chosen, the following screen is skipped:

Users who have used a fairly modern VCR would at least have an idea what PDC is, however unfortunately in the guider it does not give even a simple hint, at least should a new user start setting up a timer.  To them, they could possibly think of it as 'Perfect Digital Control" something alike!

Programme Delivery Control (PDC) works by checking the recording start time against the Programme Identification Label (PIL), which contains the start time & date and channel.  If this matches up with a VCR's schedule, the VCR starts the recording.  As the VCR checks the channel's PIL instead of its clock, this means that if the programme is running late or is rescheduled, the VCR will still record the full programme since the programme will still embed the same PIL.  If the VCR cannot detect the PDC on the channel, it will go its internal clock.

The next screen gives the user the choice of running the recording once, on a daily bases or each week:

Once the recording period is chosen, it then asks for the date, time and recording duration:

After the date, it also asks for the Time and Length as shown in the two following partial screenshots:

After the Length has been entered, the following screen will appear, like the 2nd screen in the 'Record' guider.

From this point on, the selection screens are identical to the Easy Guider's 'Record' guide, apart from the final screen which gives a summary:

Setting up a Video Plus+ Timer using the Easy Guider

This guide is pretty much identical to other timer guide with the exception that a Video Plus+ code is asked instead of the channel number, start time & date and length.  Unlike the other timer guide, Video Plus+ can only be used for recording shows from TV, which means that those who wish to record from cable or satellite will need to use the manual approach.

Video Plus+ codes are generally available in most TV guides such as in the snippet shown to the right taken from our Sunday newspaper.  The codes can be as long as 9 digits and when entered on the Recorder, it will decode it to find out the channel, start and end times.   Video Plus can also be used with PDC, which not only ensures the correct time and dates are entered, but also ensures the Recorder starts at the right time should the programme run early or late or longer than expected.

When the Video Plus+ option is chosen on the initial Easy Guider's 'Timer' screen, it will skip the input source and channel choice screens and asks for the choice of recording period, i.e. once, daily or weekly.  Once the desired option is chosen, the following screen will appear:

If this is the first time a Video Plus+ code is entered for a given channel, the Recorder will then ask the user to select which channel this is on as shown on the following screen.  As people all tend to have different channel ordering, the Recorder cannot automatically determine which the correct channel is for the first time.  Some VCRs actually require the user to set up the GCN to channel mappings manually before they can enter a Video Plus+ code, however in this case, the Recorder asks when ever a Video Plus+ code is entered for the first time on a given channel.  The following screen will not appear again if the user enters a Video Plus+ code for the same channel in future:

In this case, we entered a Video Plus+ code from BBC2, which is tuned to the preset channel number 2, so we enter 2 for the preset channel.  After this screen, or following the previous screen in the case where the GCN mapping is set up, the next screen asks for the destination choice of HDD or DVD and from this point on is the same as with a user defined timer recording using the 'TV' mode.  The final screen shows the summary:

Copying content using the Easy Guider

One nice feature with this Recorder is the ability to record directly to its HDD in the event of not having any media handy, but what about if one wants to copy to DVD at a later stage?  Well, this guider makes copying a very simple process and certainly a lot simpler for a novice user than recording content from hard disc to DVD on a PC, at least without the use of specialised software.

This Recorder supports the copying of content in either direction, excluding the copying of content from protected discs or pressed DVDs:

If the disc is a (Super) Video CD or standard Audio CD, then the Recorder will only copy the entire disc in one go to its internal HDD through the Easy Guider.  In this case, individual tracks can only be copied using the 'Browser' menu.   For example,  an Audio CD or (Super) video CD will bring up the following screen, in which selecting 'Go!' copies the entire disc to HDD:

Unfortunately, it looks like Lite-On has put a 2x speed restriction when it comes to copying content to or from CDs, regardless of the disc.  For example it takes roughly 45 minutes to copy a full audio CD on to its internal HDD!

If the 'HDD To DVD' option is chosen, the following menu will appear.  The same applies for the 'DVD To HDD' option if the disc has mixed content on it such as music, photos and video clips:

Note that the Recorder will only allow audio and pictures to be copied to a CD prepared as a Data CD or audio to an audio CD (excluding MP3's).  However, despite this limitation, the above screen will appear for the 'HDD To DVD' choice, regardless of what disc type is inserted. 

Copying Video Content

For the Video option, the following screen will appear, assuming a suitable DVD is inserted:

To copy a title, simply highlight it and press 'Enter'.  A progress meter shows during the copying process along with the percentage on the Recorder's display.  This is handy, especially for copying a large recording to or from CD since this takes around 45 minutes for a ~70 minute Video CD recording due to the speed restriction. 

Note that this Recorder will not allow content to be copied off pressed DVDs, whether or not they have copy-protection on them.  For example, the following screen appears if we try copying content from a comedy DVD that came free with a news paper and which does not contain Macrovision or copy-protection:

Copying Audio Content

The following screen shows the Audio track / folder selection:

If a song from an album is highlighted (originally sourced from an audio CD), the player will also give an option to copy just the highlighted song or the entire album:

Copying Pictures

Finally, the following screen shows the picture selection:

Like with copying music, the Recorder will give an option to copy just the highlighted picture or the whole folder (album).

While the Easy Guider offers a handy way of setting up a recording timer, some users would prefer to have more control over the timer or to quickly set up a timer without running through screen after screen.  For example, it is not possible to modify or delete a timer through the Easy Guider. 

Setting up a manual
timer

Like most VCRs, this Recorder has a Timer button on its remote.  When pressed, the following screen shows:

It is nice to see that up to 16 timers can be setup.  This makes it possible to set up several timers to record daily episodes of programmes.  With a VCR however, this could not be easily done unless the user ensured a blank / rewound tape was present each day and watched all the programmes before the next day, especially with multiple timers.

A timer can be set up by highlighting it and pressing 'Enter':

Each field accepts the following values or options:

When a filed is filled, the Recorder automatically moves to the next field in the series as shown in the above menu.  Once the recording quality mode is set up, the remaining free space is shown for both the HDD and loaded disc in the top right section.  The following screenshot shows a filled in example:

While most VCRs have an option to schedule a repetitive recording, these will keep on recording the scheduled time until the user removes the timer later on.  However, this Recorder gives the option to place a start and stop, such as if one wants to perform a daily recording for a particular period of time.  This option is within the 'Advanced' section:

If the above restriction is applied to the recording set up on the previous screen, it would limit the recording to from the 13^th of June to the 24^th of June.

The following Video clip shows an example of setting up the above timer (apart from the restriction):

Setting up a timer using Video
Plus+

Setting up a timer using Video Plus+ is a fairly quick process since the channel, start & end time and date do not need to be entered.  The Video Plus+ entry screen can be brought up by pressing 'ShowView' or 'Video Plus+' depending on the Lite-On remote:

Even though Video Plus+ only covers the channel, time period and duration, the Recorder actually eliminates the options for the Weekly repeat option as well as the advanced options.  Then again, the hidden options can be brought up by selecting 'Date/Time Setting'.

The following screen shows a filled in example using a Video Plus+ code from a TV guide:

Checking and activating the
timers

Once one or more timers are set up, it is possible to view these by pressing the 'Timer' button.  The following screen shows an example of a few timers:

The following screen shot shows the remaining details after pressing the right arrow button:

If any timers have a problem such as if the wrong type of disc is loaded or if the timer has expired, the Recorder will show an exclamation beside the timer with a little info about the problem.

Finally to activate the timers, the Recorder must be put into standby mode.  Otherwise the following message will appear:

The one major drawback with the VHS tapes is the time consuming process that is required to edit content.  For example, if one has a 2 hour recording which contains an ad break every 15 minutes or so, the only way to eliminate the ads is to re-record the programme using a 2^nd VCR.  Even still, the person would need to sit there throughout the duplication process in order to pause the 2^nd VCR each time the ads came on. 

This Lite-On Recorder makes it a fairly simple to eliminate unwanted content such as ads or even split or merge recordings.  When it comes to content on DVD-RW or DVD+RW, it is also possible to erase individual recordings to allow further recordings to be made.  Unlike a VCR, there is no risk with overwriting content by mistake as it is possible to mark which recordings can be overwritten or even mark recordings to protect against accidental editing.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to edit content sourced from a data CD or on a (Super) Video CD, even if the content is copied over to the Internal HDD.

Splitting a recording

Splitting a recording is a fairly straight forward process.  To split a recording, first select the recording to split from the Video browser or recordable DVD menu (on a disc not yet finalised).  Then press the 'Edit' button on the remote to bring up the edit menu:

Navigating can be a bit tricky as there is no option to jump to a given spot.  If the recording contains chapter marks, this makes navigation a lot quicker, however without any chapter marks; navigation can be quite tedious, especially with a lengthy recording.   To begin navigating, the preview must be put into play mode by pressing the play button and then navigation can be performed using the chapter navigation, fast forward or rewind buttons.  Once the desired spot to split is reached, press pause and then select 'split' and press 'Enter':

The splitting process takes a few seconds and results in the first portion retaining the original filename and the 2^nd portion stored in a new file with the original filename with '_01' appended to it.

Merging a recording

Merging a recording can be handy for joining up multiple recordings such as all the football matches leading up to the final for a particular country or a multipart programme, which is split up across several days or weeks.

To merge two recordings, simply go into the editor for the first part, select 'Merge With…' and then select the 2^nd part:

Unfortunately, when it comes to recording on DVD, it is only possible to merge one recording with the following recording, assuming both are using the same recording quality.  When it comes to recordings on its HDD, only recordings with matching quality and type can be merged.

Editing Chapter marks

By default, the Recorder adds a capture mark every 5 minutes into a recording, which allows the user to quickly skip ahead within a recording without relying on the fast forward feature.  However, chapters do have another advantage in that they can be placed different scenes within a recording.  For example, a chapter mark can be set for each location within a holiday recording.

In the edit screen above, the chapter for the current edit position is shown in yellow.  The Recorder gives an option to add a chapter mark at the current position, remove the chapter mark prior to the current position or hide the selected chapter.

Hiding a chapter

As most consumers use a VCR to record from commercial TV, it would be really handy to be able to eliminate the ads during a recording.  Well this Recorder makes this process fairly straight forward. 

To hide a chapter, first insert a chapter mark at the start point and another chapter mark at the end point, then navigate back a few seconds so that the current position is within the chapter to hide and finally select 'Hide Chapter'.  If there is one or more chapter marks present in the middle of the section to hide, these would need to be removed to avoid having to hide multiple chapters in-between:

Once the chapter is hidden, the disc plays as if the hidden section does not exist.  For example, while playing back in our Sony standalone, there is no noticeable pause during the time when the hidden chapter is skipped. 

One good use for hiding chapters would be to hide the commercials.  This is as simple as setting a chapter mark at the start & end of the ad session and hiding this.  Hiding chapters also works on DVDs that have not been finalised.

Renaming a recording or picture

To give the title a new name, the text editor for the name can be brought up by selecting 'Rename'.  The text editor can also be used for renaming pictures, music tracks as well as folder names:

Although the editor may look like a handy method of quickly entering letters, unfortunately it there is a small delay when navigating about the characters, making it even a fair bit slower to use than even with a non-predictive text entry mobile phone. 

The following Video Clip shows an example of entering the text 'Sample Recording' as well as the symbol, uppercase, lowercase and International character sets:

The Protection options
locks all editing controls for the current recording until the lock is removed
later on.  This is useful to prevent accidental modification:

Erasing or overwriting a recording or picture

The Erase option deletes the full recording.  Any title on the HDD can be erased.  Unfortunately as the 'Erase' feature is in the Edit screen, some may mistakenly think this as an option to erase the current chapter within a video recording; however it is not possible to simply erase a chapter.  The only way to physically erase the chapter would be to split the content before the chapter, split the content after the chapter and then merge the two end sections. 

Unfortunately, unlike erasing a title from HDD, erasing a title from a rewritable DVD will result in a fragment of free space.  This means that if a new recording starts within the space freed by deleting a previous recording, the recording must end where the original recording ended unless the following chapter has also been erased or marked as 'Overwrite'.  The following screenshot shows a deleted recording:

One drawback we find with the erase picture is that it leaves a 'Deleted' icon in the place of the original recording, even when the disc is played on another player or even finalised.  The above screenshot shows an example of a 'Deleted' icon present when played on our Sony standalone.  However, if we try to play this 'Deleted' icon, it will begin playing the following title.

Finally, the overwrite feature allows a recording to be overwritten the next time the disc is used.  This may be a useful alternative to erasing a title since the recording is not actually lost until the next time a recording is made.

Setting a thumbnail

A nice way to present a DVD, especially one that contains personal recordings would be to put interesting images as the title's thumbnails.  This can be done for recordings on HDD as well as on DVD.  To do this, simply open a recording in the editor, seek to the desired spot which contains the image to use as a thumbnail and select 'Set Thumbnail'.

Once the thumbnail has been set, it will appear on the browser or in the case with a disc, on the disc menu also.  The following screenshot shows an example of the above image set as the thumbnail for the 'Horse Racing' recording:

Folder Editing

On the HDD mode, it is often handy to be able to split up a folder or merge a few folders together such as grouping pictures or audio recordings.  Unfortunately, it is not possible to modify folders on a data disc, even if it is prepared by this Recorder.  Also it is not possible to put video content into folders.

The following screenshot shows the folder edit menu for the Picture tab:

The rename option allows the folder to be renamed or given a new title.  This brings up the same text editor as with the editor for recordings.

The 'split from…' option splits a folder in two, resulting in files shown before the split position remaining in the original folder and the files from the marker on moved to a new 2^nd folder with the title of the first folder and '_01' appended to the folder name.  Moving individual files with in a folder can be quite tedious since there is no option to move individual files.

The 'Merge with…' option joins two folders together.  When this option is chosen, the Recorder will ask for the other folder to merge with:

The above snapshot shows an example of merging a music folder; however the same process applies with merging picture folders also.

The Erase option deletes the entire folder.  We would recommend being very careful when deleting music albums since as this Recorder has such a slow CD reading speed, it can take 45 minutes just to copy one full album back on if accidentally removed.

Finally, the list of thumbnails shown towards the bottom allows the user to set the thumbnail for the folder.  When it comes to music folders, the Recorder only gives a choice of five built in thumbnails as shown in the following screenshot:

Copying content

This Recorder makes it extremely simple to copy content from a disc to HDD, apart from copy protected titles.  For copying content from HDD to disc, the disc type must match the content to be copied.  For example, Video CD content can only be transferred to a disc formatted in the Video CD format. 

One method to copy is to press the 'Copy' button on the remote.  This brings up the Easy Guider's copy menu.

The other method is to highlight the title or folder to copy in the browser and press the 'Copy' button.  The following screenshot shows an example of copying a folder:

The Disc Tools menu provides some useful tools to finalise or erase a disc, clean up old or unwanted titles off its HDD or even to defrag the Recorder's HDD such as if the Recorder is running a little sluggish:

Erasing a disc or the Internal HDD

The 'Erase' option allows the user to quickly erase a disc or the Internal HDD. The following screenshot shows the 'Erase' screen:

Performing the erase is fairly straightforward, by simply highlighting either DVD or HDD, pressing enter 'Enter' and confirming the warning.  The only drawback is the lack of a full low-level disc erase, but then again the only way to recover content from an 'erased' disc is with specialised PC recovery software.

Finalising a Disc

Finalising was already covered earlier in this review as this operation has to be performed on recorded CD-R's, CD-RW's, DVD+R's and DVD-R's before they can be played back in other DVD players.  DVD-RW's that have been quick-initialised also need to be finalised before playing them elsewhere.  The following screen screenshot the finalising screen:

HDD Cleanup

Anyone who frequently records programmes on VHS tape usually encounters a problem over time where they have a lot of full tapes, but cannot decide which ones to record over or keep.  The same scenario can happen over time with the Recorder such as if the user ends up allowing the Recorder to fill up with recordings.  This is where the clean-up tool comes into play:

As shown on the above screenshot, the user has several methods of finding content to remove.  The 'Delete Older Files' option comes in handy to eliminate old recordings that are unlikely to be played again.  If the Recorder is getting fairly full, the 'Delete Larger Files' comes is useful to find the largest recordings on the HDD.  The 'Delete Seldom Played Files' is useful to eliminate rarely played titles.  These three options show up a screen similar to the following screenshot, starting with the highest ranking title for the option chosen and then with the 2^nd, 3^rd and so on:

The 'Delete Album' option allows the user to delete full folders, however it may be just as handy to use the 'Erase Folder' option within the browser as the browser shows up six albums at a time, unlike this screen which only shows one a time:

Finally, the 'Delete All' option performs the same as choosing 'HDD' within the erase screen.  This only gives one warning, so use it with caution:

Defragging the HDD

As with any hard drive in a PC, over time when recordings are made, merged, split and deleted, this can cause the hard drive to become fairly fragmented.  As a result, there can be recordings which may be physically split up several times across the hard drive, although to the user they appear as one continuous recording.  While this may not affect playback performance, it will affect the performance of copying recordings from HDD to DVD and vice versa.

The defragment tool is available in the Tools menu.  When selected, the following screen appears:

The defragmentation process totally depends on the amount of content on the hard drive as well as how severely fragmented the drive is.  During defragmentation, the following screen shows:

Unlike most standalone DVD Recorders available, this Lite-On Recorder offers the capability of writing content to CD-R's and CD-RW's as well as DVD media.  However, unlike a PC it is not as simple as loading up Nero CD Speed to create data discs with.  This makes it impossible to create a recording graph or determine which recording technology was used on each disc as with our PC drive reviews.  In order to create test discs on CD-R and CD-RW, we made one continuous recording on a 650MB CD-RW until it filled up, copied this recording to its internal hard drive and then used this recording to create test discs with. 

Unfortunately, as this Recorder only gives recording specifications for DVD recordable discs, it is not clear what recording performance should be expected when it comes to recording CD-R's or CD-RW's. 

However, when we started recording test discs using the Video CD recording we copied to its hard drive, we soon found out that the Recorder is restricted to about 2x for writing also, regardless of the brand of CD-R or CD-RW.  As a result, we only did tests using the Video CD recording.

We will test CD-R discs from a total of 4 different CD-R manufacturers and also CD-RW discs from a total of 4 different CD-RW manufacturers.  Unfortunately, as there is no way to graph or measure the write speed on the Recorder itself, we used a stop watch to time how long it takes to prepare a disc, write the content to disc and finally finalise the disc. 

To test the preparation time, we timed how long it took for the disc to load and be recognised plus the time it took from selecting the disc type (i.e. Video CD) to the time it no longer showed 'Preparing'.  For some discs, the Recorder either kept on showing the word 'Preparing' or did not show the word at all.  In these cases, we marked 'N/A' for the time.  Then we timed how long it took to copy the prepared recording from the HDD to the disc, i.e. from the moment we pressed 'Copy' on the highlighted recording to the time the 'copying progress' dialog had disappeared.  As the Recorder automatically finalised both CD-R's and CD-RW's during the copying process, the finalisation stage could not be timed.

For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2, which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee.  It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On.  Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs.  We used a Lite-On SHOW-1693S with firmware version KS02 and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R disc will always contain some C1 errors.  C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive's error correction capabilities.  The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could easily be corrected by most drive's error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc.  A good quality disc should not contain any C2 errors and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs or at least below 10.0 on average for good quality discs.  After C2 errors are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

The results are as follows:

Although C2 errors are unwanted on a CD-R or CD-RW, this Recorder produces two to three bursts of C2 errors on every CD-R or CD-RW it records in the Video or Super Video CD mode. It is not clear why this is, however the picture quality does not appear to be affected during the affected areas, despite several plays over the affected area on a few different brands of media.  In order to show the unusually high bursts along with the regular C1/C2 errors, the graphs have been set to a logarithmic view.

The green bars in the C2 graph actually indicate C3 errors, however these appear to occur at random while reading CD-R's and CD-RW's written in the Lite-On Recorder, as each scan may show one or two at totally different points of the disc.  Again, like the C2 error bursts, no picture issues were noticed while playing back the affected regions.

Apart from the C1/C2 error bursts, this disc turned out to be an excellent recording with the average C1 count below an average of 1 error per second.

Again, like the Tevion disc above, this is another very good recording apart from C1/C2 error bursts.

Slightly higher C1 error count than the above discs as well as two small C1 error bursts, however still a very good recording with an average C1 count of only 1.2.

Finally another very good result with a low C1 error count.  As the C2 error bursts occur at the same points of each disc, this clearly indicates that this is not a fault with the discs, but instead what the Recorder is doing at these points. 

CD-Recordable with Audio:

Just to see if the Recorder performs any different when it comes to recording an Audio CD we have used another FujiFilm disc, copied on an album consisting of 66 minutes 54 seconds of music using the Recorder and then started a direct recording to fill the rest of the disc.  Unfortunately, even though the Recorder stops when it comes to the end of a Video or Super Video CD, in this case it just keeps on recording and by the time it showed that it recorded about 34 minutes of audio, we stopped the Recorder as by this point it appears like it had written over 110 minutes of audio to this disc!  When we finalised the disc and played it back, we found out that the Recorder had actually stopped at 79:59, although it kept on showing 'Recording' earlier beyond this mark.

The result for this disc is as follows:

As we can see from this disc, the optical drive in the Recorder is capable of writing a C2 error free disc, so it seems rather unusual that all the Video CD recordings have a few C2 error bursts.  There are no unusually high C1 error bursts either, although it is interesting to see smaller C1 error bursts for the section of disc that was copied directly from an existing ~67 minute recording on the HDD.  When it came to direct-to-CD recording thereafter, there are no bursts at all.

When we went to play this disc back in CD players and hi-fi equipment, the following table shows the results:

While the Sanyo Hi-Fi had no problem playing tracks, it took quite a while to change tracks; sometimes up to 10 seconds.  This is not the case when playing back an original audio CD.

Again, as this is a standalone drive, it is not possible to determine the writing technology or produce speed graphs using this Recorder.  It is also not clear what speeds of CD-RW media this drive is capable of handling as these details are not provided in the specifications.

The results obtained for our CD-RW discs are as follows:

Besides the error bursts, this recording is excellent with the C1 error count averaging at only 1.24.  It is interesting to see the C2 error bursts are located at different locations for CD-RW. 

Like the results for the Sony CD-RW, these C2 error bursts are roughly at the same points.  However, besides these small bursts, the recording is excellent with an average C1 error count of only 1 error per second.

It is interesting to see no C2 error burst towards the end of the disc.  Again, like the Viking media above, the results are very good.

This is best result we have for CD-RW media used in this Recorder, with the two C2 error bursts much lower than above and a C1 error count low enough to show the graph as a linear graph.  Again, it is still not clear why this Recorder produces a few C2 error bursts on every CD-RW it records.

Summary:

While having CD-R and CD-RW recording support is a nice feature, it is a pity to see how severely limited the recording speed is when it comes to transferring content to or from a CD-R or CD-RW.  As the drive makes a rotational noise which can be clearly heard like a CD-ROM drive while recording CD-R, we can tell that the drive is more than capable of writing to CD-R/RW's at a much greater speed than 2x, thus showing that the Recorder's own software itself is limiting the recording speed.

Finally, it is not clear why there are two to three C2 error bursts on every single Video CD-R and CD-RW written in the Recorder.  While we have not noticed any playback issues during the affected areas, C2 errors are still seen by many experienced users as a poor quality recording, especially when it comes to (Super) Video CD recordings, since these do not offer a third level of error correction, unlike data CDs.  When we tried recording an Audio CD-R on the other hand, we did not get any C2 errors.

But, then again, as this Recorder is intended for DVD recording as its name suggests, we will cover DVD-writing performance on the next page.

According to the specifications of this drive, it should be capable of writing DVD-R and DVD+R at up to 8x and DVD-RW and DVD+RW at up to 4x.  As the Recorder gives no indication of its recording speed for a given disc and there is no way of producing a write speed graph, we will use a stopwatch to time the initialisation, write time and finalisation stages. 

For these tests, we filled a DVD+RW with a continuous recording from TV using the High Quality recording setting until the disc filled up.  We then copied this recording over to its hard drive to use for creating tests discs.  The initialisation time is timed from the point the disc starts loading to the point where the word 'Preparing' no longer appears.  For DVD-RW's, the time spent while on the initialisation method screen was not included and in this case, 'Quick Initialisation' has been selected.  The recording time is timed from the point 'Copy' is pressed while highlighting the test recording until the time the progress dialogue disappears.  Finally, the finalisation stage is timed from the point the 'Finalise' icon is selected until the point it shows 'Done'.

After writing each disc, we performed a compatibility test by testing each disc in the following drives:

The recording used for each disc is a single continuous recording containing 13 chapters, each spaced 5 minutes apart.  When each disc was tested for compatibility, each chapter was tested for a few seconds to ensure smooth playback.  Apart from where mentioned below, each disc played without any noticeable issue in all drives. 

You should first notice that this is not a scientific and professional way to test the discs. But according to our testing done in recent months, we would conclude that there is a clear link between the quality reported when scanning the disc and the playability of the disc in different devices. Also notice that different drives report different amounts of errors. K-Probe was designed to work with Lite-On DVD-Writers, so we recommend using a DVD-Writer from Lite-On. In this test we use a Lite-On SOHW-832S DVD-Writer, as already said; remember that scans done with a Lite-On DVD-ROM or Lite-On combo drive can't be compared with the results obtained with a Lite-On DVD-Writer. Also remember that different PI/PO ECC sum settings along with different reading speeds in K-Probe will affect the result, we use these settings;  PI (Parity Inner) set to summarize 8 ECC blocks, PIF (Parity Inner Failures) set to summarize 1 ECC block, reading speed: 4X CLV (Constant Linear Velocity). Setting the PI sum to 8 and the PIF sum to 1 will give a result that we may compare to the standards for DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW.

This scan
below shows the results from a pressed, Single Layer DVD-Video disc (Ronin DVD).

This next scan shows
the result from a pressed Double Layer DVD-Video disc (Lord of the Rings, The
Return of the King). Notice the error jump when shifting to the second layer
(the error levels actually drop from the end of the first layer to the beginning
of the second layer).

If you read below
you will see that both of the pressed DVD-discs are well within the
standards.

If you read below you will see that both the pressed DVD-discs are well
within the standards.

Download the ECMA 267 Standard for DVD-ROM, the ECMA 337 Standard for DVD+R/RW and the ECMA 338 Standard for DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org if you want to look at the standards for yourself. Here is some data from the ECMA standards (same for DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW):

Random errors:

A row of an ECC Block that has at least 1 byte in error constitutes a PI error. In any 8

consecutive ECC Blocks the total number of PI errors before correction shall not exceed 280.

Here we see what a PI error is defined as a row in an ECC block having 1 byte or more containing errors. And that the sum of PI errors in 8 ECC blocks after each other should not exceed 280 PI errors.

But what is a row and what is an ECC block? Again we refer to the ECMA standards. We do not copy and paste everything but if interested look in the ECMA standards. A row is 182 bytes long where the last 10 bytes contain PI (Parity Inner) information. An ECC block is 208 rows long where the last 16 rows contain the PO (Parity Outer) information. This gives us a maximum possible PI error amount of 208 errors per block and for 8 blocks after each other this sum is of course 8 times higher giving a maximum possible amount of 1664 PIE-8 errors. In practical use a disc with 1664 PIE-8 errors is unreadable.

According to our tests the specified max PI-8 sum of 280 for good discs seems to be a good guideline, as some readers have problems reading discs when the PI-8 errors is over 300 and most players starts to have problems when the PI-8 error level reaches 600 or more.

But what are the PIF errors that K-Probe reports? They are Parity Inner Failures, meaning errors left after PI correction. Only the ECMA 337 standard describes the Parity Inner Failures. So how is a Parity Inner Failure defined? Here are what ECMA 337 states:

'If a row of an ECC Block as defined in 13.3 contains more than 5 erroneous bytes, the row is said to be 'PI-uncorrectable"."

In theory an ECC block may in the worst case have 208 PIF since every ECC block is 208 rows long. But the ECMA 337 standard goes further and specifies the max amount of accepted PI Failures (uncorrectable errors) allowed on a good disc:

'- In any ECC Block the number of PI-uncorrectable rows should not exceed 4." 

This means that when the PIF sum is set to 1 the maximum error value should not exceed 4. The theoretical maximum value for PIF is 208 errors.

But what makes a disc unreadable? A POF (Parity Outer Failure) error will make the disc unreadable, but K-Probe does not display the POF's.

Notice that there are other aspects such as disc reflectivity, jitter, tracking errors and so on that also will affect the readability of a DVD disc '“ but for this we do not have measuring equipment available.

And another note is that we have scanned the discs at 4X CLV speed, by lowering the speed to 2X(DVD-R/RW)/2.4X(DVD+R/RW) or 1X the amount of reported errors may drop on some discs. We scanned at 4X CLV due to lower speeds taking to much time.

To see if there is a connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs we also include the reading curve from a NEC ND-3520AW DVD-Writer. The reason why we have changed reader is that some companies disliked that we used a modified firmware to obtain 16x reading speed. So to please them we are now using a drive that reads DVDR media at 16x as default. A small speed reduction near the end is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading problems or reading failures is a bad sign.

Easier explanation on how to read the test results.:

Maybe this got too technical and you are wondering what to look for in KProbe reports?

Use this as a guideline for good discs:

PI (Parity Inner): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 280.
PIF (Parity Inner Failures): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 4.

And as always; lower is better

And look at the reading curve; does it look clean with no dips it should be good, a small slowdown near the end is accepted.

For some reason, when KProbe is used with DVD+R's that were recording using the Lite-On Recorder, KProbe will continue reading beyond the end of the disc, with the progress going beyond 100%.  As a result, errors start clocking up once it goes beyond 100%, so the errors on the following test results can be ignored as no errors have clocked up during the scan before it reached 100%.

Unlike recording on CD-R or CD-RW, we can see that there
are no unusual high spikes in either the Parity Inner or Parity Inner Failure
graphs.  This disc gave fairly good results with both fairly low PI and PIF
error rates as well as a perfectly straight read speed graph.

In this page, we carry out various tests such as to see which audio codec bit rates it supports, what types of video is supported and video recording picture quality.  For those interested in playing discs from outside of their DVD region, we will cover how to remove the region lock.

As this player is capable of playing WAV, WMA and MP3 audio, some may ask about what bit rates and modes of each codec is supported.  For example, WMA could mean WMA standard, WMA professional, WMA voice, WMA VBR or WMA DRM, not to mention the choice of bit rates also. As this Recorder cannot be connected up directly to a PC for Windows Media Player to authenticate it this obviously rules out WMA DRM support. 

For these tests, we used Goldwave to create different Wave formats, LAME 3.96.1 to create different MP3 formats and Windows Media Encoder 9 series to create different WMA formats.

Wave Audio

As Wave audio does not need much processing besides resampling it to suit the internal DAC, we have only done a limited number of tests on wave audio, which includes different bit depths, sample rates and channels to basically cover from the lowest to the highest bit rates one is likely to encounter.  The test results are as follows:

It is nice to see support for up to 96 kHz audio as well as
32-bit playback support, however this is unlikely going to output any quality
better than what its internal DAC's are capable of handling.  As we do not
have equipment to test its digital out capabilities, it is unclear if any wave
format with a sample rate higher than 48 kHz or bit depth of greater 16-bit is
down converted.  On the other hand, the player is incapable of playing
24-bit wave audio as these result in a loud buzz coming from the
speakers.

MP3 Audio

As MP3 is still the most widely used audio format when it
comes to consumers carrying their music on the move or downloading it online,
some may ask what bit rates it supports or whether it plays variable bit rate,
etc.  When encoding MP3, we left LAME to decide on the sample rate and MPEG
version.  We will also test free-format bit rates in which the MP3 is
encoded at a non-standard bit rate, such as 125kbps for example. 

The Sample rates and MPEG Versions LAME used for CBR
encoding are as follows: